"Fear not, for I am with you..."

It’s easy to preach such texts in theory but times come when we are put to the test.   

There is currently an outbreak of Ebola Virus infection in western Uganda.  Cases have been mainly in Kibaale forest, some distance to the north of Kisiizi, but we are taking it seriously as we know a lot of people from our catchment area travel up to Kibaale to work in the timber industry.  It is likely that if they become unwell they may return home, and then  if they deteriorate they may come to us.  We have therefore had to spend a lot of time putting contingency plans in place including introducing a new patient triage near our main gate to try and pick out any cases before they mix in the out-patient queue.  We have set up the old operating theatre as a high-dependency area should it be required with barrier nursing facilities and we have partitioned our Isolation Ward to give more control of patient and visitor access.   

We hope we don’t get any cases as it is one of the viral haemorrhagic fever conditions that is extremely infectious.  We have had a number of volunteers from our Staff to help should we have any cases and will do further training this week.

Some medical students from UK have been advised to cancel or conclude their electives here because of the outbreak and potential risk.

Measles rash

A lot of our work is to do with infectious diseases, especially pneumonia, malaria, typhoid, TB, HIV and, occasionally, measles.  The immunisation rates here are quite good but still we see some cases slip through.